As Vey dissolved, the reality they had supported began to thin. The Kyo that had been maintained by their documentation became unstable, not dangerous but uncertain—spaces where multiple possibilities coexisted without collapsing into trauma. The Mukade network flickered, its channels losing the coherence that Vey's severance had provided. Documentation became difficult, then impossible, then unnecessary.
Sorine experienced this as grief made material. The world becoming as insubstantial as her loss. She continued to document, through the thinning, recording the dissolution of the structures that had made recording possible. She wrote on ofuda that became translucent, spoke into channels that carried only silence, maintained the form of documentation after its function had ended.
Vey experienced the thinning as return. The void they had carried, the emptiness that had defined their function, was becoming their substance. They were not dissolving into nothing. They were dissolving into what they had always been—the hollow that allowed form, the space between, the severance that enabled connection by making it temporary.
They tried to speak to Sorine. The words failed, or the hearing failed, or the space between them had thinned too far to carry communication. They tried to touch. Their hand passed through her, or her shoulder failed to register pressure, or the calibration of 2.3 kilograms per square centimeter had become impossible to maintain.
The thinning accelerated. Reality became suggestion. Possibility became probability. The Covenant's dissolution, the Kyo's instability, the atmospheric resonance of accumulated trauma—all of it released as Vey's structure failed to contain it.
Sorine held on. Not to Vey—they were beyond holding—but to the Kanjo, the space between that had defined them, the love that persisted through documentation. She held it as it thinned, as it became transparent, as it approached the limit of visibility.